For all her active goodness, Florence Nightingale herself was far from being the angelic figure of popular adulation: … - David Cannadine

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If I had known it I would have told my son, I'd rather shoot you than let you join the SS. But I didn't know.

David Cannadine

For all her active goodness, Florence Nightingale herself was far from being the angelic figure of popular adulation: according to Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians she was a self-righteous, domineering amazon, who was ruthless in her compassion, merciless in her philantropy, destructive in friendships, obsessional in her list for power, and demonic in her saintliness.

Angelic, Compassion, Florence Nightingale, Power, Self

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The older I get the more I'm convinced that it's the purpose of politicians and journalists to say the world is very simple, whereas it's the purpose of historians to say, 'No! It's very complicated. ' The job of the historian is to help give people a sense of existence in time, without which we are really not fully human.

Jobs, People, Politicians, Purpose, Say, Simple

He was, albeit only briefly, the hero of the world's hopes.

Albeit, Briefly, Hero, Hopes, War, World

Like sex, poverty and power, suicide may always be with us. But like them again, the actual form is takes is essentially time-specific and culture-bound, not only in the past but in the present too. The people who took their lives, the paths which led them to that end, and the experience of dying in this way were deeply influenced by specific historical circumstances. Only by making a greater effort at historical understanding can this most secret house of death be made to yield up more of its confidences.

Dying, Past, Secret, Sex, Specific, Suicide

For those who reject it, the Victorian experience is something to feel embarrassed about, to apologise for, to escape from, and never to repeat. But to those who remain enthralled, it is a fabulous story of oustanding success and splendid achievement, by comparison with which Britain's 20th century records seems at best unimpressive, and often distinctly lacklustre.

Achievement, Fabulous, Reject, Remain, Repeat, Stories

For Henry James, class was 'the essentially hierarchial plan of English society' which was 'the great and ever-present fact to the mind of a stranger; there is hardly a detail of life that does not in some degree betray it'.

Class, Details Of Life, Essentially, James, Mind, Stranger